Category

Integration

Nine Practices to Orient to the Light AyahuascaIntegrationSpirituality

Nine Practices to Orient to the Light

Ayahuasca generates a special kind of light. Peruvian author Cesar Calvo writes of how ayahuasca "irrigates the unknown territory: that is its way of shedding light." I love his description of the plant's alluring "black light," the light that illuminates your consciousness and your most intimate hidden realities. When I speak of the light of ayahuasca, I mean light in both senses of the word—feeling lighter and freer, more elevated, and also brighter, shinier—illuminated from within. This kind of light…
Jun 12, 2026
When Ayahuasca Reveals Past Lives AyahuascaIntegrationPersonal ExperienceShadow

When Ayahuasca Reveals Past Lives

It's said that ayahuasca has the power to clean various disorders and misalignments at the root, supporting healing from the bottom up. What constitutes a deeper root than our past lives? Indeed, it seems ayahuasca can help us face the karmic consequences of past actions, be these from a previous incarnation or an ancestral inheritance. Let me unpack this a bit more here. We modern folks are in the beginning stages ...
May 8, 2026
11 Reasons to Integrate Integration

11 Reasons to Integrate

Integration helps you focus on the whole picture of your work with ayahuasca; not just the ceremonies, but the entire trajectory—so your work can be as complete as possible. Remember, it’s not just ayahuasca you’re working with: it’s ayahuasca + your individual psyche + your personal history, and thus a unique experience.Someone who’s experienced with the medicine and familiar with the ins and outs of psyche, emotions, and shadow can contribute a lot to the process. Call it therapy, consulting,…
Aug 5, 2024
Why Integration Is Not a Should AyahuascaIntegrationSociety

Why Integration Is Not a Should

Very occasionally an integration session feels faintly out of alignment to me. It seems like the person I'm working with is doing it from a sense of duty, rather than a genuine desire to deepen into their own experience—as if they’re not quite sure what integration is, but they’ve heard it’s important, so they’re checking it off the post-ceremony to-do list. Sometimes we can explore together to tap into a genuine desire to grow; and then we’re integrating.
Feb 25, 2023
WTF, Ayahuasca?! AyahuascaEmotionsIntegrationPersonal ExperienceSociety

WTF, Ayahuasca?!

Often, too often nowadays, people expect ayahuasca to be some sort of magical potion, instantly reformatting them into a completely healed state. When this doesn't happen, they feel resentful, even betrayed: "I did the work, I showed up—why did it do this to me?" This can easily segue into the very common plaint of individuals wrestling with unrecognized trauma: "What's wrong with me?" I'm seeing this kind of reaction more and more lately, due in part to the rapidly spreading…
Dec 29, 2022
ayahuasca integration
Four Integration Essentials AyahuascaIntegration

Four Integration Essentials

People sometimes tell me that following a powerful ceremony, they seemed to completely forget about it—almost as if they’d shut it off. Intense experiences can be disconcerting, yes—but isn’t this the point of medicine work, to break us out of our rut, to recast our mundane vision into a new light? In every difficult experience, it’s by directly facing the pain that we unlock the door to true magic. Remember that hoary therapeutic adage: It’s impossible to transform that which…
Oct 19, 2020
We’re Not Made to Heal Alone IntegrationPersonal ExperienceShadowSociety

We’re Not Made to Heal Alone

We humans need other humans—to call us on our stuff, to name our shadow. To see ourselves as we cannot. To initiate us into new paths and practices. And to support us through the rough ride that ayahuasca can bring, the retriggered trauma and angst-y feelings that can arise. Let’s take shadow work first. By shadow I mean all the forgotten, repressed, unseen and un-integrated psychic material we’ve left behind in the process of growing up. Very often we need…
Jul 13, 2019
Ayahuasca Obfuscada AyahuascaDietaIntegrationPersonal ExperienceTeacher Plants

Ayahuasca Obfuscada

Work with Amazonian plantas maestras or teacher plants is almost always enlightening, but the process can be confusing, too. The language of plants is not exactly straightforward or clear-cut. They speak to us in non-verbal ways, through images and sensations that can be vague, diffuse, difficult to understand. Plant teachers move at a different pace than our harried everyday minds, a pace that’s organic, slow and grounded, growing from what came before and connecting with what is in ways we…
Jan 12, 2019
Stacked Ayahuasca Vine
Knowing When It’s Enough, Part II AyahuascaIntegrationthe Dark Side

Knowing When It’s Enough, Part II

In ceremony a few years ago I received a most disagreeable vision of everyone in the circle lying back on their mats like giant infants, crying out "Give me more! Give me more!" The message couldn’t have been any clearer than if we’d appeared in diapers: immaturity, greedy appetite combined with shallow capacity—it was a humbling reality check around exactly what our responsibility is in this process. To me, that image pointed to a kind of passivity. Wailing “Give me…
Nov 28, 2018
Ayahuasca: Knowing When It’s Enough AyahuascaIntegrationthe Dark Side

Ayahuasca: Knowing When It’s Enough

It’s one thing to know when you’re called to start working with ayahuasca. It’s an entirely different matter to know when to stop. When is it time to take a break, or halt, at least for the foreseeable future—and how do you know when you actually need to go back and drink more? Here we’ll look at the issues of timing, sequencing, and pacing, and explore some questions to ask yourself as you navigate through your own personal landscape. I…
Nov 12, 2018